Visions, Toni en famille, Le Ciel rouge: What’s new at the cinema this week
What to see in theaters
THE EVENT
VISION ★★☆☆☆
By Yann Gozlan
The essential
Yann Gozlan tries his hand at a Hitchcockian thriller with Diane Kruger. At the risk of favoring form over substance…
A long-haul captain of unparalleled professionalism, leading a perfectly regulated existence alongside Guillaume (Kassovitz, a little absent), her protective husband. The repeated flights and “jet lag” begin to disrupt the young woman’s biological rhythm, and particularly her sleep. One day, by chance, she crosses paths with Ana, a photographer with whom she had a passionate affair twenty years earlier. Estelle is far from imagining that this reunion will lead her into a nightmarish spiral and tip her life into the irrational… Under the influence of Hitchcock, Lynch and Nolan, Gozlan films the dizziness of this woman who no longer acts the difference between dream and reality. Haggard or feverish, Diane Kruger embodies this dual heroine and does well even if the film does not quite give her the means, neglecting the emotional stakes too much and playing the card of virtuosity to impress its spectator. Damage.
Peter Lunn
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PREMIERE LIKED A LOT
THE LONELY CASTLE IN THE MIRROR ★★★★☆
By Keiichi Hara
A strange trajectory than that of Keiichi Hara: over the years, his Miss Hokusai (2015) is definitely an exception, both in Japanese animated production and in its director’s own filmography. In signing this biopic of a melancholic artist who wondered if we could stay away from the world, Hara was perhaps wondering if we could make a film that could stay away from the world, like a sanctuary. Following this masterstroke, Hara had turned Wonderland: The Kingdom Without Raina gentle and harmless odyssey of fantasy, inevitably a little disappointing. And deep down, The Lonely Castle in the Mirror can be seen as the story of this impossibility. A group of Japanese teenagers find themselves propelled via their mirrors into a parallel world based on enigmatic mechanisms. And the film hits us right in the heart, not with its (classic) technique but with its emotional charge. Were we expecting to see a nice tale? Missed ! Hara is definitely a funny filmmaker.
Sylvestre Picard
THE RED SKY ★★★★☆
By Christian Petzold
Ondine was born from Christian Petzold’s desire to make a summer film. But it has its own sauce, far from the carelessness usually associated with the genre. And the fire which begins to develop around the house where the action which sets the scene takes place. That of an initially invisible threat which will approach this place chosen by two friends for their vacation. Two friends who are completely opposite – Félix, hedonistic photographer and Leon, writer obsessed with his second novel – and who will be surprised to discover Nadja (Paula Beer, divine) the owner’s niece there. A cohabitation which will be one of all dangers for hearts ready to burst into flames as quickly as the surrounding countryside. The most accessible work of its author, The Red Sky is also a great cruel film around bitterness, built around Leon, one of those characters we love to hate (Thomas Schubert, impressive), full of himself, who will miss out on everything precisely by dint of his inability to look and others. Throughout a storyline rich in carefully distilled twists and turns, Peztold creates a tragedy that is as moving as it is uncomfortable.
Thierry Cheze
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FIRST TO LIKE
TONI WITH FAMILY ★★★☆☆
By Nathan Ambrosioni
The film opens with Toni (Camille Cottin) behind the wheel of a car and sees her whole family, made up of five teenagers, pile into the passenger compartment. On the radio a song resonates, an old hit which we understand illustrates the hour of ephemeral glory for Toni, once a star of the song. The children sing this song that they obviously know by heart but the host suddenly breaks the general enthusiasm and makes a comment on the supposedly old-fashioned nature of the title in question. On Toni’s face, pain is printed, that of time that has passed and sends her back to this role of solo mother, curled up under the weight of her offspring. Toni with family hears the story of how this everyday super heroine will try to relearn how to dream for herself. The filmmaker who tells this is only 23 years old and this is already his second feature film after Paper Flags which already made the family unit a refuge and a prison. This new film delicately manages to bring this myriad of characters into existence and coexist and to identify their common concerns. The filmmaker’s intelligence is to believe until the end that this emancipation is not necessarily opposed to this group idea.
Thomas Baura
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ANTI-SQUAT ★★★☆☆
By Nicolas Silhol
A single mother, Inès is about to be evicted from an apartment with her teenage son but she finds a job with the Anti-Squat company, whose activity consists of temporarily housing tenants in unoccupied places in order to protect these homes against squatters. Inès’ role is to recruit residents to whom she must enforce drastic regulations. And she quickly understands that this system is driven more by financial profit than by empathy for people looking for housing… Eager to describe the contemporary climate of social anxiety and economic injustice, Nicolas Silhol (Corporate) entrusts the impeccable Louise Bourgoin with the role of a woman torn between the cynical mission demanded by her employers and her desire to come to the aid of the precarious residents to whom she becomes attached. The result is a tension worthy of an urban thriller. And despite its sometimes mechanical narration, this committed fable plunges us until the last shot into a morally murky and captivating zone.
Damien Leblanc
THE TEMPLE WOODS GANG ★★★☆☆
From Rabah Ameur- Zaïmeche
This social thriller, inspired by a real robbery that occurred in 2014 by a gang whose members came from a working-class neighborhood of Seine-Saint-Denis, is seen from the inside through a double perspective: that of a soldier retired near future bandits and then an experienced henchman, responsible for tracking them down. In their sights, there is life, better still, the joie de vivre of a group of friends involved in a highly sensitive heist (the victim is a Saudi prince). The film offers a third axis and looks at them as “children” unconcerned with the real issues and implications. An “angelism” which contrasts with the roughness of two sequences worthy of an American action film. But far from a dichotomy or even a contradiction, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche tells here the way in which extreme violence is part of a complex balance of power where the social and cultural sphere interferes in choices. In his first feature, Wesh Wesh, what’s going on?, the hero, just released from prison, could only note this political rupture. It is this same tear that propels today the small band of Temple Wood in a world too big for her.
Thomas Baura
AN AUTUMN IN GREAT YARMOUTH ★★★☆☆
By Marco Martins
Thierry Cheze
THE WASTELAND ★★★☆☆
By Ahmad Bahrami
There seems to be no place or time. There is simply a brick factory, located in the Iranian desert, with its workers and its boss. The dominated and the dominant. Class struggle, quite simply. But the factory, overwhelmed by financial difficulties, is preparing to close. The Iranian Ahmad Bahrami (The Wastetown, released this summer) films the workers, cowering, dejected, who take turns facing the powerful, locked in his ivory tower. The filmmaker simplifies the device, repeats his scenes over and over again, uses black and white, adds dramatic faces, fragile and powerless bodies, patriarchs of virtue, a hidden love. And elevates his film to the rank of poetic fable. Here, better than anywhere else, the drama of capitalism is played out: the deprivation and disintegration of the community. It’s both emaciated and masterful.
Estelle Aubin
THE FIELD OF POSSIBILITIES ★★★☆☆
By Aly Muritiba
Daniel, a 40-year-old masculinist cop, gradually falls in love with a virtual relationship (we obviously think of Her by Spike Jonze). But his romantic quest quickly turns towards a queer elsewhere. Impossible and queer. There, in the Brazilian plains, love is a tradition, not a freedom. Without avoiding all the pitfalls of the romantic story, the feature film captures the ambiguities of gender and gender transition, and elevates the work of light into a political mantra. It couldn’t be more liberating.
Estelle Aubin
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FIRST TO MODERATELY LIKED
INSIDE ★★☆☆☆
By Bishal Dutta
We can’t see her, but she lives inside. A demonic entity devouring souls feeds on negative human energies. There is only one way to contain the monster: lock it in a jar and feed it raw meat. At least that’s what a young high school student tells her best friend. The latter, Samidha (Megan Suri), initially doubtful, ends up believing her when the monster comes to attack her. From this film signed by the producers of Get out, we first expect a breath of fresh air in the horror genre: a horror plot that revolves entirely around Hindu culture, that’s not common in Hollywood. But by dint of predictable screamers integrated into an overly classic pattern, what should have been a breath of fresh air ultimately leaves us with the impression of being warmed up.
Sarah Deslandes
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A little imaginationshort film program
